A method and system according to the invention is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,825,988. In the known system, interactive print jobs are transmitted to the printer via the network and stored locally at the printer. The n the user walks up to the printer, identifies himself and in reaction is presented with a list of his own stored jobs. He may now select a job from the list and give a print command with respect to the selected print job, whereafter the job is printed. According to the mentioned patent, the rationale of this printing procedure is, that when many users would be able to print directly from their workstations, the printed jobs would rapidly form a cluttered pile from which the user has to extract his own sheets. According to the basic idea behind interactive printing, users are obliged to have their jobs printed in their presence, so that they can take their prints with them at once. For those reasons, it sometimes happens that system managers exclude the possibility for users to print in any other way than interactively.
This printing method, however, has a drawback in that the users, when they have walked up to the printer and started the print process, have to wait until their job is finished. The known method is therefore especially suited for fast printers, so that waiting times are limited.
However, when a user wants to print a large print job, or a number of print jobs, waiting time may become unacceptably long. In that case, it would be advantageous to have a possibility to still start a print job from the workstation.